The Natural Limits on Prying

Kevin Drum has good fun mocking the rapidly expanding military use of drone aircraft as a jobs program (described in an article in today's Times).  But he's picking up on a ratio which I see differently: From his quote of the Times article:

The pressures on humans will only increase as the military moves from the limited “soda straw” views of today’s sensors to new “Gorgon Stare” technology that can capture live video of an entire city — but that requires 2,000 analysts to process the data feeds from a single drone, compared with 19 analysts per drone today.

In other words, for all the security cameras in public places, and all the surveiling which is being done, current technology requires human eyeballs and human social recognition skills to make sense of what is captured.  So if someone want to follow my life, it means a couple people working 8 hours a day to monitor it. 

My bottom line: just because data is accessible, as through a security camera, doesn't mean anyone has the incentive to watch and (mis)use the data, considering everything else they could do with their time.

France Versus UK

From Dirk Beauregarde, in the context of a planned road trip:

Looking at the map of Britain though, everything seems complicated. France is criss-crossed by a set of logically placed and well-built motorways. The British road system though has more than a passing resemblance to a diagram of the human nervous system. The French plan their transport links, the British just seem to make them up as they go along. Building of roads born of necessity, rather than some pile-driving, republican principal, to link every outpost civilisation in France with Paris.

Frankly, the British road network looks scary, and whereas in France, there is one road to one place, and all roads lead to Paris, British roads go everywhere and nowhere in particular. A sure fire formula, for getting hopelessly lost.

Why Bureaucracy Is Needed: Greece

Two paragraphs from today's NYTimes article on the Greece mess.  The lead-in is that the EU has doubts over Greece's capacity to reform and retrench its government:

“The main problem is that he’s [the prime minister] only been able to deliver on the parts of the austerity package that are easily enforceable and transparent and irrevocable,” such as cuts to public sector salaries and pensions, said Spyros Economides, a political scientist who co-directs the Hellenic Observatory at the London School of Economics. “Unfortunately, the rest of it is a complete mess.”
“It’s very easy to legislate,” Mr. Economides added. “The problem is to enforce legislation. There’s no enforcement mechanism. It’s all done for the eyes of the public.”

My point is Greece apparently doesn't have a reasonably effective and honest bureaucracy, one which will work away in the back rooms implementing the promises of the PM and the laws of the Parliament.  If Greece defaults and becomes another Lehman Brothers, triggering further economic downturns, we can say: "for want of a Greek bureaucrat, the economy was lost"

The Great Bureaucrats of Your US Government (DOD)

As best one can tell, Nick Kristof is right in the NYTimes to praise the accomplishments of DOD and VA, in running a single-payer healthcare system, in doing child care, in running an education system, in being effective with only a 10 times difference in pay between private and 4 star general.   Steve Benen at Political Animal applauds and amplifies. What's complicated is: why?

Kristof suggests a sense of mission.  I'd say a sense of community. Political scientists have found less support for social welfare programs when the relevant population is more diverse; the more closely we identify with potential recipients of aid, the more willing we are to help. Compare the willingness to help the people of Tuscaloosa and Joplin with our non-help for disasters in Africa.

Why Pasture-Rearing Is More Costly

See the picture of the piglet at Musings of a Stonehead. I'm tempted to state a general law: the more control people can exert over nature, the cheaper the costs, but the bigger the danger when the system of control blows up.  There's tradeoffs in all cases.

House Ag Appropriations Action

While the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition often takes positions with which I have some problems, they seem almost always to do a good and detailed job of summarizing what's happening on the Hill.  Rather than resummarize what happened when the House passed the ag appropriations bill, see their summary. 

Just two things I'd mention: one is the obvious--this vote means little, the real action will be how the conference committee reconciles House and Senate bills (assuming there ever is one) particularly the paying Brazil $147 million for cotton program bit).  The other is the fact that the USDA building and facilities fund was raided for other purposes.  No one worries about how the bureaucrats are housed.

Bureaucrats: Ho Hum, the New Faces Leave

A reason federal bureaucrats in many agencies react with a certain reserve to the bright shiny new ideas of the bright shiny new bosses appointed by a bright shiny new President (I'm thinking of GWB, who did you I think I was thinking of ) is they know the boss won't be around long.  A couple years and gone.  See this Federal Computer Weekly piece on Vivek Kundra, the departing CIO.  (Also this piece from Ohmygov and this from OMBwatch)

[Updated:  see this Kelman post on the same subject:

Making major management reforms in government takes time. Ironically, one problem is that such reforms are often not partisan. That sounds good, but it means that when new political appointees rush to eliminate what the previous politicals have done, it just creates "flavor-of-the-month" cynicism among career employees and diminishes the willingness of the career folks to work on any management improvement initiatives politicals promote.

Though I didn't mention it in the previous blog, I remember my annoyance when the Bush folks arrived in 2001 that  within days they dismantled any mention or trace of the Clinton/Gore administration's "reinventing government" effort. It was, so to speak, bush league.]

Why Obama Desperately Wants to Win Reelection

His daughters, who will be teenagers (Obamafoodorama):
"I have men with guns that surround them often, and a great incentive for running for reelection is that it means they never get in the car with a boy who had a beer, and that's a pretty good thing,” President Obama said.

The Role of Rum in the Revolution

I've always been fascinated by a bit I ran across in a Lancaster county publication: British prisoners, I think from the battle of Saratoga were being kept or marched through Lancaster (for a while they were in a camp near York, PA, possibly guarded by men commanded by an ancestor of mine).  There was a dispute over how much their daily ration of rum should be, so much for the men, so much for the women, so much for the children.  Apparently it was accepted on all sides that rum was mother's milk for all.

Today Boston 1775 quotes a letter on another website written by a private at the start of the Battle of Bunker Hill. He says, as they were digging in: "We began to be almost beat out, being fatigued by our Labour, having no sleep the night before, very little to eat, no drink but rum..."

Not something Tea Partiers will tell you about the Revolution.

You Can't Choose Your Allies: John Yoo and Obama

Yoo attacks Boehner over War Powers Act.  As far as I can tell, both Obama and Boehner have flipped their positions, so Yoo is an exemplar of consistency.